


Headland

by Anarhichas



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:31:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anarhichas/pseuds/Anarhichas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin finds the ocean. Then he is submerged.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Headland

Even the grass is strange. Armin stumbles on a tussock, falling to his aching knees, and stares at it for a moment. The blades are tough and curled into short tubes, not grass-like at all. Eren’s weight on his back makes getting to his feet a trial, but he does it, mouth dry with exhaustion. The air tastes strong, foreign, coating his tongue with an unknown flavour. In the distance there is a noise, a lilting and quiet murmur, like sandpaper.

Armin doesn’t know what he expects as he scales the hill. More forest, perhaps, like the forest covering the land from half a mile behind them to all the way back to the wall. Old trees and gnarled roots, the same as those that had lamed first his horse then Eren’s as they’d fled. Trees that had given them some sanctuary, until their gas had run out.

It’s not forest.

The sight is enough to take his breath away.

He slips and slides down the other side of the hill. Eren groans a half conscious protest at his jostling, but where else can they go? A titan undoubtedly remains behind them, momentarily outpaced but who knows for how long. Titans either side that have not seen them, but only not yet.

Armin reaches the bottom of the hill, slowing to an unsteady walk. Stones crunch and shift under his feet, perfectly smooth, and a thousand sculptors working a hundred years each couldn’t have achieved this. They are about egg sized, flattened spheres of brown and rust red, white, dark grey and every shade in-between. Some have stripes, immaculately curved. Some have dimples, and spots of colour. They are all different – these ones more flat than the others, these ones larger, these more angular. They stretch to either side until lost behind jutting cliffs, a road separating the landscapes.

It’s hard to walk over the stones. How deep do they go? Armin hitches Eren higher even when it feels like his back might break from the strain of it.

The water in front of them, mirror flat and blue-grey, an endless winter sky puddled out on the ground, captivates. Little waves wash the outer most stones, appearing and disappearing again and again in endless repetition. Where they are touched by the water the rocks glisten, polished into vibrancy.

Armin sits awkwardly, unwinding the steel rope he’d managed to salvage from his broken gear and use to tie Eren’s arms in a loop around his own neck, securing them together on their journey. He touches the raw and unhealing skin of Eren’s wrists, then leans down to press their lips together, soft and sure.

He can’t tell if Eren responds – whether the movement of reciprocation is real or purely his own imagination clinging to tired hope. He pulls away, picking up Eren to prop them back to back, and ties the rope around their chests and waists. Eren can't see the water like this, he thinks regretfully, but reassures himself that it won't be for long. Then he sits there, loose limbed, watching the ocean.

Time passes.

An incoherent roar drifts on the air and Armin turns his head. The titan has found them, then, its short legs making easy work of the hill. Armin crawls to his feet slowly. Is it him, or are the waves reaching closer than they had been before?

He steps out into the water, feet then thigh then chest deep. It's freezing cold, lapping at his chin, disappointingly foul tasting. ‘Hey, Eren,’ he manages to say, as the bottom drops away and they bob on the waves, paddling forward with tired bones. ‘Do you think titans can swim?’


End file.
